This chapter builds on the author’s book Advancing Empire: English Interests and Overseas Expansion, 1613–1688 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), which considered the establishment of seventeenth-century English overseas commercial and colonising endeavours from a global perspective, tracked those enterprises as networks of aristocrats and merchants – rather than the English state or the British composite monarchy – and initiated and developed them along with the worldwide conflicts and negotiations they generated, especially with Dutch rivals. Thus, this contribution engages the latest literature on the part played by the English state in early modern empire-building along with recent characterisations of the functions and roles of ‘company-states’ in English imperial history. In doing so, it argues that joint-stock and other forms of proprietorships constituted a natural evolution from medieval practices whereby the Crown granted rights to conduct functions such as holding markets and fairs for chartered ‘private’ entities: such activities benefited the ‘public’ weal and, thus, warranted the chartering of extraordinary ‘public’ powers, including to conduct diplomacy and warfare, to those who had the wherewithal and interest – that the Crown customarily lacked – to carry them out.

This chapter highlights the recent burst of controlled, scientific research on medical and non-medical uses of psychedelic drugs and MDMA to improve individual welfare, and argues that this research should be extended to couples in romantic relationships. It questions the line between ‘drugs’ and ‘medicine’ and argues that such distinctions often reflect dubious social and historical factors, rather than a clear-eyed assessment of actual benefits and harms. It introduces the idea that love drugs might help strengthen certain relationships, and that anti-love drugs might help other relationships end. But there are serious risks that might be associated with such drugs, and the wider social implications will be hard to predict. To minimize this risk and uncertainty, careful ethical deliberation and nuanced policy measures will be key.

What are love drugs? Basically, drugs that affect love—or romantic relationships more broadly. This chapter begins with an account of drugs, explaining that they are essentially just chemicals—clusters of molecules that work on the brain to produce certain effects—and that our choice to regard them as medicine versus recreation, or as a means to personal or spiritual development, is up to us. It is a question of values. The chapter then gives an account of love, explaining that it has both biological and psychosocial dimensions. When there is a tension between love and well-being, it may make sense in certain cases to intervene in either or both of those dimensions to improve our relationships and our lives.

The chapter analyzes the first case study: Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review and co-chairman of the non-governmental organization SANE. Cousins was an American PPE who established communication channels with Soviet leaders, including Nikita Khrushchev, and took part in efforts to promote the nuclear test ban negotiations (1962–1963). The analysis addresses Cousins’s role in establishing the Dartmouth dialogue conferences, his meetings with Khrushchev and Kennedy, a proposal he made that served as a basis for Kennedy’s American University speech, and his public activity to secure support for the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

The chapter offers a reflexive account of the author’s own cowardice to condemn calls for condemnation. Younis looks at that terrible marriage of cowardice and silence – each begetting the other. It is one thing to not condemn, it is another to know deep down that silence, a failure to ‘condemn condemnation’, is born of an ever-present desire to remain seen, recognised and validated. Younis shares a personal account of a time when he consulted for the Montreal police, as part of a special committee which discussed Muslim/Arab concerns. It was not uncommon to discuss issues regarding terrorism/radicalisation in these meetings. When they arose, the narrative remained static: yes, there are ‘bad Muslims’ out there, but there are ‘good Muslims’ (especially in the room) who were model citizens. Model-ness, their very being, was thus the physical manifestation of condemnation. Though misgivings at this thought, he learned to assert (and fail at asserting) his apprehension at other times. Chiefly the chapter charts how silence was often an act of cowardice with its rewards: recognition and trust by those in Power, and at one time a ‘get out of interrogation free card’ at US–Canada border control. But silence is suffocating, as he expresses how he learnt to withhold his thought. This chapter is about how cultures of condemnation result in a yearning to be seen by Power, so that those who are accused can find its ‘good’ light.

The chapter analyzes the second case study: Suzanne Massie – an American writer and expert on Russian culture and history, who developed contacts with officials in Washington and Moscow, and worked to promote dialogue and improve relations between the countries. This chapter examines the activity and influence of Suzanne Massie as a PPE during the years 1983–1988. It explores her relations with both sides, which included frequent visits to the Soviet Union and meetings with US president Ronald Reagan.

A Muslim and a lawyer specialising in national security cases, Fahad Ansari is often filled with anxiety that the actions of one of his clients who happens to share the same faith will result in him becoming the story: the centre of wall-to-wall iage with insinuations of entryism, accusations of extremism and calls for condemnation. Whether that day comes or not, the reality is that his behaviour remains under scrutiny from the authorities, the judiciary and other lawyers because of his open Muslimness. He is regularly required to persuade an often sceptical court that many of the religious beliefs of his clients, such as the supremacy of shariah law, the establishment of a caliphate and jihad, do not fall exclusively within the realm of ‘extremist Muslims’ but are normative mainstream Islamic beliefs shared by over a billion Muslims. The fact that he does not attempt to conceal that he also shares some of those beliefs regularly results in him being regarded as suspect. Refusing to condemn, when society demands it, is enough to become suspect. Glorifying your belief system cements that suspicion. But Ansari takes it a step further which, for many in the profession, places him outside the fold of acceptability – as he condemns the oppressive nature of the legal system his clients are subjected to.

explores the relationship between graphic designers and the Milan Triennale from 1933 to 1957. First, the Triennale is approached as a mediating channel: a public platform to showcase the criteria of good taste and improve public understanding of the practice. Secondly, the Triennale is explored as a commissioning body: an institutional client which commissioned graphic practitioners to design its own visual identity. While showing continuity in the drafting of the practice between the interwar and post-war period, the chapter also addresses the adaptation of design discourses to changing political circumstances. For instance, it traces the critical debates that gradually associated modernist aesthetics with the notion of good taste over two decades. At the same time, it problematises the malleability of modernist graphics as a vehicle of ideologies beyond the design realm. Indeed, an analysis of fascist political exhibitions and propaganda displays – such as the Mostra della Rivoluzione Fascista in Rome – brings into question the association with democratic and humanist ideals that modernist aesthetics acquired in the post-war period. Chapter 3 also suggests that exhibition design offered practitioners a means of working in three dimensions and experimenting in dialogue with architects and others outsider the typography workshop.

By looking at conflicts, negotiations and temporary alliances between the Aiap (Association of Italian Advertising Artists) and the ADI (Association for Industrial Design), chapter 5 investigates graphic designers’ changing organisational strategies and shows how they mirror the shifting position of the practice in between advertising and design. In line with the book’s overall argument, it demonstrates that practices are in a constant state of formation and that professional bodies play a key role in this open-ended process. Considering graphic designers’ multiple social identities and fields of practice, the chapter investigates graphic design’s continuous renegotiation of its own boundaries and its adaptation to changing design discourses. To better understand the differences between the Aiap and the ADI, and therefore the membership strategies of graphic designers in Italy, it explores contemporary debates around the position of graphic design at the intersection between two allegedly incompatible fields, namely advertising and design. While looking at the local Italian scene, it analyses transnational circuits – the Alliance Graphic Internationale and International Council of Graphic Design Associations – to investigate the ways in which Milan’s graphic designers participated in and responded to transnational debates on graphic design.

This chapter outlines the theoretical framework of the private peace entrepreneur phenomenon and offers a toolkit to discuss and analyze PPEs’ characteristics, activities, and impact. The first part presents a typology of PPEs, outlining their resources, types, and action patterns; the official establishment’s attitude towards PPEs; and critical arguments against their activities. The second part examines PPEs’ impact on the official diplomatic sphere, identifies their influence patterns, and suggests an analytical framework that distinguishes among variables: those related to the PPEs, those related to their peace initiative, and those that are external.

Chapter 3 builds a biography of Princess Diana made up by the images of her body in official portraits, fashion magazine and tea towels – in a context that saw the politics of images of women’s bodies at the forefront of feminist campaigns in all their different forms. A number of academics and commentators have analysed a particular photograph taken of Lady Diana during her engagement to Prince Charles. It was taken in the garden outside the exclusive nursery where she then worked. The sun behind her shone through her cheesecloth skirt and rendered the fabric invisible, exposing her legs underneath. The image linked ideas of Englishness, imperial womanhood and nationhood, and marks the changing relationship between the monarchy and the press. But for Julie Burchill, the combination of Diana’s ‘sweet docile face, a way with children’ and her exposed body made her simultaneously explicitly sexual and innocent. Chapter 3 uses Diana’s contradictory femininity to look at the changing relationship between the politics of gender and the nation and pictures of women’s bodies.